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Friday, October 21, 2016

David Brooks, "How to Repair Moral Capital": None of the Above

In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "How to Repair Moral Capital," David Brooks savages Donald Trump's decimation of "moral capital," i.e. "the set of shared habits, norms, institutions and values that make common life possible." However, Brooks also takes Hillary Clinton to task for contributing to the dismantlement of American standards of moral conduct. Brooks writes:

"Clinton has contributed to the degradation too. As the James O’Keefe videos remind us, wherever Hillary Clinton has gone in her career, a cloud of unsavory people and unsavory behavior has traveled alongside. But she is right to emphasize that Trump is the greatest threat to moral capital in recent history and that the health of that capital is more fundamental than any particular policy position.

. . . .

The election of 2016 has exposed the staleness of the Republican and Democratic ideologies. It has also established a nihilistic, reality TV standard of conduct that will pull down the country if it is allowed to survive. The one nice thing about Trump is that he has prompted so many people to find their voice, and to turn from their revulsion to a higher alternative."

A "higher alternative"? Pray tell what that would be.

A pity Americans are not being provided on November 8 with the "higher alternative" of voting "none of the above."